Report: Declining insect populations worldwide threaten human catastrophe

 

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Report: Declining insect populations worldwide threaten human catastrophe

The world's insect population is experiencing a sharp decline, which portends a bleak future for global food supplies and a catastrophic environmental situation, contrary to the common belief that insects are harmful and annoying.
According to a report published by the specialized scientific website "Live Science" and reviewed by "Al-Arabiya.net", the significant decline in the number of insects in the world portends a disaster that may harm humans and may create suffocating crises in the future, which means that a solution to this crisis must be found.

"When I was a child, I would go out in the summer and come home to find my windshield covered in insects," said Cheryl Schultz, an ecologist at Washington State University. "Now, you can drive through many areas at the same time of year, and your windshield is clean."
This phenomenon, called the "window test," points to a broader and more worrying trend: insects, especially the flying ones that pollinate many crops, are in sharp decline.

Live Science reports that this sharp decline is disrupting ecosystems around the world and could jeopardize global food supplies, but tracking the decline in insect numbers over the past three decades has proven extremely difficult, and stopping this decline may be even more difficult.
Both the total number of insects and the number of their species have seen a steady decline for decades in almost every place scientists have looked, leading researchers to call it the "end of insects."

Global bee biodiversity has declined by 25% compared to pre-1995 levels, according to research published in 2021. A comprehensive study conducted in 2025 showed that butterfly abundance across the United States had decreased by 22% over the previous two decades. A study in Germany also found a staggering 76% loss of flying insects in some of the country's forested areas over a 27-year period.
Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Invertebrate Conservation Society, a non-profit organization, stated: "It's alarming."

Experts generally understand why insects are becoming scarce, citing climate change as the primary factor. As the planet warms, the plants that serve as primary hosts for insects are beginning to bloom earlier each year. This can disrupt the life cycles of some species, leaving many newly hatched or mutated insects out of sync with their food sources. Extreme heat, reduced snow cover, severe storms, and prolonged droughts can also weaken previously robust insect populations. Meanwhile, milder winters can benefit certain adaptable pest species, which may outcompete vulnerable insects and cause environmental and agricultural devastation in some areas.

The second factor, according to a Live Science report, is ongoing urban sprawl, deforestation, and the drying up of suburban meadows, which provide habitat for less diverse insect populations. As humans encroach on insect habitats, insects like ground bees are left without space to build nests, raise their young, and overwinter, leading to population declines.

The final factor is pesticides, which pose a major threat to wild bees and are still used in the United States and some other industrialized countries, including parts of Canada and Australia.
"What we are witnessing is extremely rapid environmental change," said Roel van Klink, a researcher at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research. "Species that were adapted to conditions 50 or 100 years ago are no longer adapted to current conditions, and therefore their numbers are declining."

Scientists say the disappearance of insects is a bad omen for the global food system. As the world's population continues to grow, the pressure that declining insect numbers—especially pollinators—pose on the food system could lead to an agricultural economic collapse, as well as increased food scarcity.
Francesca Mancini, an environmental modeling expert at the British Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, stated: "Preventing further decline is no longer sufficient. We need to restore insect biodiversity to its previous levels."

Mancini added that in Britain alone, the economic value of insect pollinators is estimated at $1 billion annually. In the United States, this value is estimated at around $34 billion.
Worldwide, three-quarters of the crops we consume—and slightly more than a third of total crop yields—rely on insect pollination. The degree to which these crops depend on pollinators varies; some, like soybeans, would be far less productive without insect pollination, while others would disappear altogether.

“In fact, coffee and chocolate are 100% dependent on insect pollination,” says Van Klink. Managed European honeybees do much of this pollination work, and beekeepers around the world carefully maintain, transport, and release them into fields every year. But for many crops to thrive, they need more than just honeybees.
Some staple crops, such as soybeans, can grow without insects. However, research has shown that soybean fields visited by pollinators produce significantly higher yields.